A much-loved 55-acre park located in north-west Stoke Newington. In 1790 the Quaker banker Jonathan Hoare commissioned his
nephew Joseph Woods to build a mansion here, demolishing four houses on the north side of Church Street in the process. Brick
earth was excavated in the grounds, leaving two depressions that were later made into ornamental lakes. Hoare had previously
lived across the road on Paradise Row and called his new home the Paradise House. Within ten years financial difficulties
forced him to move out and in 1811 the estate was sold to the Crawshay iron-making family. Eliza Crawshay inherited the property
on her father’s death in 1835, when she married the Reverend Augustus Clissold. The couple had previously been conducting
a secret affair that had allegedly prompted Eliza's father to build a high wall around the estate to keep out the lovelorn
parson. From the mid-nineteenth century streets began to be laid out on former glebe land to the south. One of the first was
Park Road, now Clissold Road. After the death of Augustus Clissold in 1882 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners bought the estate
with the intention of profiting from a property development scheme. However, this was a time of popular and municipal zeal
for public open spaces and the Metropolitan Board of Works bought the house and grounds in 1887 for the creation of Clissold
Park. Joseph Beck and John Runtz were leading proponents of the purchase and the twin lakes were named Beckmere and Runtzmere
in their honour. The park was endowed with a lodge soon after it opened but this was replaced in 1936 by the flats of Clissold
Court. Opposite the surviving Georgian houses of Paradise Row a dip running along the edge of the park marks where the New
River ran until this stretch was filled in during the 1950s.